Partly on the strength of their apparent success in insurgencies such as Malaya and Northern Ireland, the British armed forces have long been perceived as world class, if not world beating. However, their recent performance in Iraq and Afghanistan is widely seen as—at best—disappointing; under British control Basra degenerated into a lawless city riven with internecine violence, while tactical mistakes and strategic incompetence in Helmand Province resulted in heavy civilian and military casualties and a climate of violence and insecurity.

In both cases the British were eventually and humiliatingly bailed out by the US army.In this thoughtful and compellingly readable book, Frank Ledwidge examines the British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking how and why it went so wrong. With the aid of copious research, interviews with senior officers, and his own personal experiences, he looks in detail at the failures of strategic thinking and culture that led to defeat in Britain’s latest "small wars." This is an eye-opening analysis of the causes of military failure, and its enormous costs.

Designed following the relatively poor performance of America’s multi-role fighters during the Vietnam War, the F-15 Eagle was conceived as a dedicated air superiority fighter. But, having trained for 15 years in the Eagle it wasn’t Eastern Bloc operated MiGs that the F-15 eventually came up against, but pilots of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi airforce.This book analyses the combat between the American and Soviet ‘Cold War fighters’ in a balanced manner, examining how the technical abilities of the aircraft combined with the different levels of training available to opposing pilots and groundcrews allowed the F-15s to destroy the Iraqi offensive abilities within weeks of the First Gulf War starting.

Packed with artwork, illustrations and photographs, this book places the reader in the cockpit during one of the last major dogfighting air wars in modern history.

The F-15C/E has formed the backbone of US and Coalition operations in the Middle East for over a decade, patrolling the skies over northern and southern Iraq as part of Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch. F-15Cs policed the skies for Iraqi aircraft operating in contravention of no-fly zone agreements, whilst the F-15E was constantly dropping weapons onto the Iraqi SAM and AAA emplacements that engaged Coalition aircraft undertaking this mission. The USAF’s use of the F-15 in the region culminated with Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-present), which was launched in order to liberate the people of Iraq and ensure the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

In doing so, the F-15C was used to protect friendly troops and aircraft from any last-ditch attempt to use the Iraqi Air Force. In the event, the F-15Es of the 4th Fighter Wing saw most prolific use, engaging Iraqi armour before Coalition ground troops moved forward, and providing close air support to soldiers and Special Forces as they came into contact with the enemy.

The F-15A/C is irrefutably the most successful jet fighter of the last 30 years. Serving in the Air Forces of Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia, it has racked up a kill ratio exceeding 105:0. Despite its age, it remains the leading operational air superiority and intercept platform in service today. The hi-tech wizardry of modern air combat detailed in this book makes for fascinating reading, even to those not immediately familiar with modern airpower, and a huge pool of previously unpublished information on both aircrafts’ combat records is uncovered.

Allied Participation in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM examines the achievements and contributions of the allied nations that supplied ground troops to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq during 2003–2009. It does not cover forces deployed to Iraq under the aegis of the United Nations or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

This edited volume addresses the issue of threat inflation in American foreign policy and domestic politics. The Bush administration’s aggressive campaign to build public support for an invasion of Iraq reheated fears about the president’s ability to manipulate the public, and many charged the administration with ‘threat inflation’, duping the news media and misleading the public into supporting the war under false pretences.Presenting the latest research, these essays seek to answer the question of why threat inflation occurs and when it will be successful.

Simply defined, it is the effort by elites to create concern for a threat that goes beyond the scope and urgency that disinterested analysis would justify. More broadly, the process concerns how elites view threats, the political uses of threat inflation, the politics of threat framing among competing elites, and how the public interprets and perceives threats via the news media.The war with Iraq gets special attention in this volume, along with the ‘War on Terror’. Although many believe that the Bush administration successfully inflated the Iraq threat, there is not a neat consensus about why this was successful. Through both theoretical contributions and case studies, this book showcases the four major explanations of threat inflation – realism, domestic politics, psychology, and constructivism – and makes them confront one another directly. The result is a richer appreciation of this important dynamic in US politics and foreign policy, present and future.This book will be of much interests to students of US foreign and national security policy, international security, strategic studies and IR in general.

This sensational book reveals the true and compelling story of the Special Force units of the Coalition, such as the SAS, SBS and Delta Force who worked in the shadows, often unseen, unheard and unsung. It describes their missions behind the lines from the early days, well before hostilities opened formally. It was an open secret that groups were deployed probably operating in the western desert against Saddam’s forces and the Scud missile threat. What was actually going on is revealed here and until now their roles and actions have not been described in any detail.

Prize-winning author and award-winning foreign correspondent Michael J. Totten visited Iraq seven times between 2005 and 2009, first as a "unilateral" freelance journalist without a gun in the autonomous Kurdistan region, and then as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in Baghdad, Sadr City, Fallujah, and Ramadi. In the Wake of the Surge is his gripping first-person narrative telling the story of the Kurds, the Arabs, and the Americans in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein during one of the most violent and wrenching periods in that country’s history.

He was there at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the surge led by General David Petraeus during the Iraq war and saw first-hand how young men from places like Florida and Texas pacified a relentless insurgency–an insurgency that most people, during the darkest days of the war, assumed would be victorious. This is a bracing story of combat in a tormented country by a man who has spent enough time in the Middle East to know there are few happy endings, but who nevertheless was a witness when Iraqis and Americans drove each other to the brink of the abyss before managing, against all odds and at the very last second, to pull back and save themselves from utter catastrophe.

The Barrett M82A1 and its derivatives are among the most successful sniping rifles ever manufactured. Now entering its fourth decade of service, the short-recoil, semi-automatic system is capable of firing a devastating. 50-caliber round with lethal accuracy over distances of more than 2 kilometers. Unconfirmed reports from Afghanistan in 2012 accredit the Barrett with one of history’s longest ever kills at 2,815 meters. This is the technical history of a rifle initially developed as a sporting firearm, but which evolved into a long-range sniping rifle and a formidable military anti-materiel tool, designed to neutralize everything from enemy vehicles to parked aircraft.

Adopted by snipers across the world, the Barrett rifles have seen active service in Operation Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan and have become an important addition to police, armed services, and Special Forces units alike.

Understanding the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is essential to understanding the United States in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond. These wars were pivotal to American foreign policy and international relations. They were expensive: in lives, in treasure, and in reputation. They raised critical ethical and legal questions; they provoked debates over policy, strategy, and war-planning; they helped to shape American domestic politics. And they highlighted a profound division among the American people: While more than two million Americans served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many in multiple deployments, the vast majority of Americans and their families remained untouched by and frequently barely aware of the wars conducted in their name, far from American shores, in regions about which they know little.

Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan gives us the first book-length expert historical analysis of these wars. It shows us how they began, what they teach us about the limits of the American military and diplomacy, and who fought them. It examines the lessons and legacies of wars whose outcomes may not be clear for decades. In 1945 few Americans could imagine that the country would be locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union for decades; fewer could imagine how history would paint the era. Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begins to come to grips with the period when America became enmeshed in a succession of “low intensity” conflicts in the Middle East.

Thousands of American soldiers are returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with severe wounds from chemical war. They are not the victims of ruthless enemy warfare, but of their own military commanders. These soldiers, afflicted with rare cancers and respiratory diseases, were sickened from the smoke and ash swirling out of the burn pits” where military contractors incinerated mountains of trash, including old stockpiles of mustard and sarin gas, medical waste, and other toxic material.B

Based on thousands of government documents, over five hundred in-depth medical case studies, and interviews with more than one thousand veterans and active-duty GIs, The Burn Pits will shock the nation. The book is more than an explosive work of investigative journalismit is the deeply moving chronicle of the many young men and women who signed up to serve their country in the wake of 9/11, only to return home permanently damaged, the victims of their own armed forces’ criminal negligence.

151 combat missions21 hard kills on surface-to-air-missile sites4 Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor1 Purple HeartSure to rank as one of the greatest aviation memoirs ever written, Viper Pilot is an Air Force legend’s thrilling eyewitness account of modern air warfareFrom 1986 to 2006, Lt. Col. Dan Hampton was a leading member of the Wild Weasels, the elite Air Force fighter squadrons whose mission is recognized as the most dangerous job in modern air combat. Weasels are the first planes sent into a war zone, flying deep behind enemy lines purposely seeking to draw fire from surface-to-air missiles and artillery.

They must skillfully evade being shot down—and then return to destroy the threats, thereby making the skies safe for everyone else to follow. Today these vital missions are more hazardous than direct air-to-air engagement with enemy aircraft. Hampton’s record number of strikes on high-value targets make him the most lethal F-16 Wild Weasel pilot in American history. This is his remarkable story.Taught to fly at an early age by his father, Hampton logged twenty years and 608 combat hours in the world’s most iconic fighter jet: the F-16 "Fighting Falcon," or "Viper" as its pilots call it. Hampton spearheaded the 2003 invasion of Iraq, leading the first flight of fighters over the border en route to strike Baghdad. In the war that followed, he engaged in a series of brilliantly executed missions that earned him three Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor; he notably saved a U.S. Marine unit from certain death by taking out the surrounding enemy forces near Nasiriyah. Two years earlier, on 9/11, Hampton’s father was inside the Pentagon when it was attacked; with his dad’s fate unknown, Hampton was scrambled into American skies and given the unprecedented orders to shoot down any unidentified aircraft. Hampton also flew critical missions in the first Gulf War, served on the Air Combat Command staff during the Kosovo War, and was injured in the 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist attack.With manned missions rapidly giving way to remote-controlled UAV drones, Viper Pilot may be the last memoir by a true hero of the skies. Gripping and irreverently humorous, it is an unforgettable look into the closed world of fighter pilots and modern air combat.

A fast-paced narrative history of the coups, revolutions, and invasions by which the United States has toppled fourteen foreign governments–not always to its own benefit"Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the latest, though perhaps not the last, example of the dangers inherent in these operations.In Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer tells the stories of the audacious politicians, spies, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers. He also shows that the U.S. government has often pursued these operations without understanding the countries involved; as a result, many of them have had disastrous long-term consequences.In a compelling and provocative history that takes readers to fourteen countries, including Cuba, Iran, South Vietnam, Chile, and Iraq, Kinzer surveys modern American history from a new and often surprising perspective.